


Of Friends and Snakes

by kaeda



Category: Naruto
Genre: Childhood, Fluff, Friendship, Gen, General
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-08-20
Updated: 2006-08-20
Packaged: 2017-10-04 23:47:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,593
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/35400
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kaeda/pseuds/kaeda
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Seven-year-old Jiraiya suddenly decides that he's going to be friends with Orochimaru.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Of Friends and Snakes

Orochimaru had always been quiet and weird, and one day, while simultaneously pulling Tsunade's hair and yelling at Orochimaru to _react, damn it!_, Jiraiya decided he was going to be friends with him. For a seven year old, this was a Very Serious Declaration and required much thought, so Jiraiya let go of Tsunade's blonde pigtail and peered at Orochimaru curiously. The dark haired boy stared back passively, not even bothering to blink.

Finally, Jiraiya spoke.

"You should really cut your hair, it makes you look like a girl!" he said seriously, expecting an appreciative look for his important advice.

Orochimaru moved so fast, Jiraiya didn't know what hit him until he was face-first in the mud, with Tsunade laughing somewhere above him. By the time he'd picked himself off the ground and rubbed the mud out of his sore eyes, Orochimaru was gone, and Tsunade was wrinkling her nose.

"Don't you ever learn?" she crowed. "I think his hair is nice!"

"You just want to braid it and put bows in it!" Jiraiya accused. "You're such a _girl_!"

For the second time in five minutes, he ended up face down in the mud.

\-----------------

For such an important endeavor, Jiraiya decided to go straight to the top of the chain of command, and two days later he found himself squirming uncomfortably as his teacher and Hokage focused that intense gaze on him.

Sarutobi was tired and it was late, but being the teacher of three geniuses was never easy, and though Jiraiya was definitely the most normal of the bunch, an academy graduate at seven was still an academy graduate at seven.

"How do I become friends with Orochimaru?" Jiraiya asked him petulantly for the third time in as many minutes. Sarutobi rubbed his temple.

"You're teammates. If you're friendly to him, I'm sure you'll become friends," he explained patiently, although he himself didn't truly believe it. Orochimaru was precocious almost to an unhealthy degree, and he disliked anything remotely resembling a social situation.

"But Orochimaru's so quiet and weird!" Jiraiya replied. "He'll never be my friend unless I force him!" Sandaime had only been Hokage for a year, and wondered what on earth had possessed him to take on a genin team a few months after taking on the responsibility of ruling the village.

"Well," he said awkwardly. Jiraiya stared at him with giant watery eyes and Sarutobi groaned inwardly. "Do you have any hobbies in common?" He was going to go home and have a drink, he thought crossly. It was the only way he wouldn't strangle his charges.

"He's always playing with _snakes_," Jiraiya said derisively. Sarutobi winced; he'd noticed the same phenomenon and was slightly nervous about it.

"Why don't you ask Orochimaru to tell you about his snakes?" he suggested. If Jiraiya got Orochimaru interested in socializing with _people_ and also figured out what was going on with the interest in snakes, Sarutobi could kill two birds with one stone, all with the help of a bratty seven year old.

"I don't like snakes!" Jiraiya shot that idea down.

"Maybe you should give them a chance," Sarutobi tried to sound wise, but only ended up sounding tired. Luckily for him, Jiraiya was too young to hear the difference.

"Do you think it'll help?" Jiraiya asked.

"I think Orochimaru will be thrilled," Sarutobi lied, and sighed in relief as the boy dashed out of his office as fast as he'd arrived. These kids were so much trouble sometimes.

\-----------------

The next day, Orochimaru and a garden snake were having a nice, calm conversation when a loudmouthed brat interrupted them. Jiraiya plowed down into the dried riverbed, kicking up the dust from the long, hot summer, and tumbled head over heels to land in front of them.

Orochimaru gave him a disdainful look. "What are you doing here?" he asked politely, but he was obviously aggravated at being disturbed.

"I…er…" Jiraiya righted himself and fidgeted in one swift movement. "I wanted to meet your snake!" Orochimaru glared in annoyance; the garden snake he'd made friends with had slithered off at the first sign of the younger boy, and she didn't look to be returning anytime soon. "Where'd it go?"

"_She_," Orochimaru stressed calmly, "does not like loud noises anymore than I do." He thought the implications of his statement were clear, and hoped Jiraiya would take a hint, but the other boy was tenacious in his idiocy and just flopped down on a rock beside him.

"Well then you and I can hang out!" he announced.

"No," said Orochimaru, and stood up.

"But I know all kinds of neat tricks!" Jiraiya practically radiated energy. Orochimaru decided leaving without saying anything was the best course of action and started up the riverbank.

When Jiraiya _tackled_ him, he realized turning his back had been a bad idea.

"Let's be friends!" Jiraiya chirped from his perch on Orochimaru's back. Orochimaru signed noisily and said nothing. Jiraiya took this as a cue to continue. "We can make sandcastles and you can show me your snakes and we can practice sparring together and it'll be _fun_!"

"No," Orochimaru said again.

"You don't know what you're missing!" Jiraiya practically yelled in his ear, causing him to wince. "I don't really like snakes but I like frogs and toads and stuff and I bet you would like them too, they're kind of like snakes only they've got legs and…"

Orochimaru gracefully detached the parasite from his back and stared down at him with a bored look on his face. Jiraiya, despite hitting the ground roughly from Orochimaru's technique, didn't skip a beat.

"Ooof! And they both like water, don't they, and we could go swimming and practice genjutsu and ninjutsu and Tsunade can't come cuz she's a _girl_!"

"I can too come!" a shout came from a nearby tree.

"Can not! Stop following me!"

"Even though I'm a girl, I can still beat you unconscious!"

Orochimaru took this opportunity to slip away, and when Jiraiya finally noticed he was gone, he'd escaped cleanly. That didn't stop him from hearing the shout, however.

"HEY! Orochimaru got away because of you, you _girl_!"

"You're so annoying, Jiraiya!"

He twitched. The snakes wouldn't be around for the rest of the day due to the noise, and now he was obviously going to have to maim his teammates.

\-----------------

Jiraiya was nothing if not persistent, and soon Orochimaru realized he'd have to do something more than simply walking away to discourage his attempts at 'friendship'. Orochimaru did not _do_ friendship. He had companions and he cared enough to keep them alive, but _friends_?

Jiraiya, of course, was not smart enough to register this.

"Oro~chi~ma~ru!" he crowed after training a week later. "Let's go get dumplings!" The smile on his face was so bright that Orochimaru thought it would give him a headache.

"No."

"But dumplings are sooo good, and we can train again afterwards if you want, and maybe you could teach me that thing you do with your wrist and the kunai, because we're _teammates_ and that makes us _special_ and-"

Orochimaru wondered if Jiraiya was capable of speaking without using run-on sentences.

"-Tsunade won't be there because she's got her _dolls_," Jiraiya finished scathingly.

"I do not play with dolls, you jerk!" Tsunade yelled back. She was walking ahead with Sarutobi-sensei and had been ignoring them disdainfully up until that moment.

Orochimaru, as usual, slipped away while they were arguing, but this time Jiraiya caught up to him in the forest and glared at him with angry eyes. He frowned petulantly and stomped his foot.

It was then that Orochimaru realized the easiest thing to do would be to agree to be friends.

"Orochimaru!" Jiraiya stomped again, but Orochimaru put his finger to his lips and shushed him.

"I'll let you meet one of my snakes," he said seriously. Sensing that Jiraiya was about to crow in triumph, he smacked him. "_If_ you can shut up for five minutes."

"Okay, okay."

Orochimaru called up a little grass snake and she twirled around his wrist, hissing suspiciously at Jiraiya, who crouched down to peer at her. He was obviously trying not to recoil and Orochimaru found himself surprised that Jiraiya would care enough to try so hard.

"Does it bite?" Jiraiya asked hesitantly.

"No, _she_ doesn't." Orochimaru held his arm out hesitantly and Jiraiya grinned, although a little nervously.

"Hi snake-chan!" he crowed with his usual enthusiasm. The snake eyed him disdainfully before crawling up Orochimaru's sleeve. "She doesn't seem to like me," Jiraiya said sadly.

Orochimaru almost bit back something mean, like _'she's got the right idea'_, but he'd long ago learned to keep his thoughts inside his head and not speak unless it truly mattered, and so instead he just sighed and stood up.

"Where're you going?" Jiraiya asked. "I don't have anything to do and you wouldn't get dumplings with me. Do you have anything to do?" He peered intensely up at Orochimaru with his wide, puppy-dog eyes.

"…I guess we can get dumplings…" Orochimaru conceded after a long pause.

"YAY!" Jiraiya yelled. "Let's go _right now_ and then we can do some sparring or maybe spy on Tsunade and make sure she's not doing anything bad and then we can…" and he grabbed Orochimaru by the arm and lugged him off before the smaller boy could protest.

And as Orochimaru bit into his dumpling and watched Jiraiya shove five into his mouth in rapid succession, he realized, '_maybe I wanted a friend after all._'


End file.
